Gilles Néret (1933–2005)

I’ve read enough publications from Taschen’s art portfolio that I’ve become incredibly sceptical about the authorial quality, but I was happy to not find myself immediately annoyed with this book. It’s much smaller in volume than most of the other art books I’ve read, so the temptation to skip reading in lieu of absorbing strictly the artwork was much lessened and I was determined to read the book cover to cover. I did achieve this goal, but unfortunately found myself frustrated again due to the author’s hyper-focus on the aspects of sexuality that he perceived in Klimt’s work. Obviously there are many aspects of his interpretations that I agree with (for example that Klimt’s women were extremely forward in their aspect for the time period, and the way that he presented nude figures was certainly unique), but his over-use of certain terminology became tedious and at times seemed to imply a sense of disdain for female sexuality and the female form as presented by Klimt. Obviously Néret’s academic subject when it came to art critique was centered around eroticism, but I came into this book expecting an broad (but brief) overview of Klimt’s work not a detailed critique of a singular theme. Taschen may know how to style and print beautiful books, but the recurrent theme of inadequate authors seriously gets on my nerves.… (mer)

As much as I enjoy Dali’s artwork, this book was not very good… Most of the problems stem from the fact that they shrunk the book down to half-page size, so the text and images became very small and very little of the detail in the artwork could be enjoyed. It did not help matters that I found the writing style to be rather obtuse and impossible to become engaged in. I’m sure Dali had a fascinating life, but the presentation was so subpar that I don’t feel like I got much out of reading this book.… (mer)